Not too many discussing tha article as Mack has already noticed.

Some even try to prove the author's point by playing the insulting skeptic and the ignorant believer (skeptic, 02 Sep 04 - 10:28 AM).

it is a "skeptic" movement website for debunking New Age beliefs, but not conventional religious beliefs. (02 Sep 04 - 02:39 PM )

02 Sep 04 - 02:39 PM , you're completely uninformed.
Two recent issues of that magazine have been dedicated to discussing science and traditional religions. And you don't seem to realise what they consider debatable and what not. The line is whether they deal with statements of fact or statements of belief and nothing else. They have often attacked factual statements of traditional religions about evolution, appartions of the madonna and cosmology. If its about (transcendent or whatever) beliefs it's off limits for them, even if this only may be a small cult, if it's about statements of facts it is open season whoever has said that.

To make it clear in an example: If the catholic church says that in the transsubstatiation procedure the wine becomes the blood of Jesus in a metaphorical sense, it's none of their business. If a catholic priest says that in his church the wine has actually turned into blood in a physical sense, they don't shirk to act.

Daylia, at your first post I have yawned, because it was a repetition of anecdotal evidence, nothing new or interesting. But I was pleased to see in a later post a link to empirical research. That's what I want and I applaud you for that. I went to that link and looked for a review or metaanalysis article. I found REIKI—REVIEW OF A BIOFIELD THERAPY HISTORY, THEORY, PRACTICE, AND RESEARCH on the site you had linked to and I started to read

Two things are met my eye at the first reading:
(1) The good and strong effect are nearly exclusively on pain perception measured with a subjective variable. I've told it a few times here, that is exactly the combination for which the placebo effect is maximal. Subjective pain perception can be influenced by many methods in suggestible people (long know for instance in hypnosis reasearch). For these people, this is of course preferable to medication for these side effects are smaller than with pain killers.
(2) Most articles cited are in lesss known journals and are case reports or anectodal articles. Only a minority is about placebo control research with random assignement. There was one thing that immediately made me suspicious. Nearly all of the well controlled experimentation came from one single author, namely D. Wirth. (look at the table on the last page) Well, I'm like an old detective, sometimes I get suspicious without at first being able to tell exactly why. That is my intuition (which is nothing else but difficult to verbalise knowledge), but you should not rely upon someone else's intuition.

I knew I had heard or read that name recently and I did a bit of follow up work: Doctor Daniel Wirth has no medical degree, he is doctor of parapsychology. Most of his many articles (which look good at the first glance) come from the Healing Sciences Research International with no university affiliation. Another researcher who didn't trust those good looking papers of Wirth tried to communicate but got not response. He then tried to communicate with co-authors and found that some even did not know they were mentioned as coauthors. Wirth, who also sometimes used a wrong name to get a passport, has been involved in several fraud cases, has been charged with transporting stolen money and with making fals statements at court. Insurance fraud can be added to that list.

In May, 2004, when the trial United States vs Wirth & Howard (an accomplice) was about to begin, they pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and bank fraud. This month, the verdict is expected and that guy will go to jail.

This is the same Daniel Wirth who has left in his trail dozens of articles about the effect of alternative treatments and prayer. Some better journals that had accepted his articles have removed his articles from their websites. The London Observer had an article about him in May, this year: Exposed: conman's role in prayer-power IVF 'miracle'.

This man is responsible for all or nearly all of the (at the first glance) well controlled studies about Reiki etc. My guess is that this is one of the cases where someone with an agenda (easy money in the alternative health scene) has published data he never had sampled. Anyway, data from this source are not believable any more, and I must say that I am surprised a Reiki site you have linked to still has an article praising Dr. Wirth without any qualifications. Don't they read that the only source with controlled Reiki reserarch has been discredited or don't they care. At least, I'd loved to have read a word of warnign. But that fits well in the picture I see too often: articles that have long been thoroughly discreditied and debunked are still cited as evidence on believers' sites. I get the impression that for them the results of a study is more important than the quality.

But, Daylia, go on please giving me access to empirical research. Don't tell stories that cannot be checked for accuracy, give me something else to work on. Articles and empirical research, that my beef. Give me more of that. The first site, I'm (not) sorry to say, is not very convincing for the reasons told here.

Wolfgang